Obscurity, much?/NBCUniversal
NBC has a reputation of making its Saturday morning fare (especially in the 1980s) obscure, in addition to making entire networks obscure. Please note that this only applies to properties produced, owned, or broadcast by NBC and/or Universal Studios, and does not include other Comcast properties, such as DreamWorks Animation. NBC Examples *Kissyfur, despite being one of NBC's highest-rated Saturday-morning cartoons during its day, is slowly fading into this. *Let's just say that any of NBC's final Saturday-morning cartoons prior to Discovery Kids on NBC that isn't named The Smurfs or Super Mario World (the latter got out of obscurity thanks to YouTube Poop) fell into the "completely obscure" section. *The NBC run of Qubo, despite the channel getting out of this for people lucky enough to get the channel. *Any show aired on NBC that gets cancelled during its first season and never brought back are this unless it proves to cause a major franchise later on. Case in point: America Alive only has one episode and a promo up, despite having a role in cementing the talk show genre for years to come. *On the radio side, the only moment from WNBC-AM widely known nowadays that NBC Radio itself had no part in is its shutdown, especially since Roger Grimsby (who never worked with WNBC-AM and was simply there on duty from WNBC-TV, its former sister TV station) said the absolute final words on the radio station before it cut to WFAN. However, WNBC-AM isn't really obscure; mention it to anyone in New York who was born before 1988, and they'll tell you about its awful demise. *Reportedly, NBC tried to do this with Star Trek: The Original Series once it was cancelled. It backfired thanks to the introduction of demographics and instead proved itself worthy enough to cause a major franchise that is still going. Other examples *The syndicated version of Storm Stories, which was broadcast on The Weather Channel. **Speaking of The Weather Channel, Forecasting the End also counts; it's Wikipedia page is only a few sentences long. *By the time it shut down, G4TV was mostly known for the various series (and competitors) it sent into obscurity: **At the time it was bought out, TechTV was a relatively obscure network with a huge cult following. After G4 bought out TechTV, the two networks merged (albeit in-name only), dropping all TechTV shows (except The Screen Savers, which became Attack of the Show!, GameSpot TV, which became X-Play, and Anime Unleashed, which fell into obscurity between the buyout and March 2006 until being discontinued). **And then in 2005, Neal Tiles changed the name back to just "G4" and tried to forget about TechTV. Despite G4 trying to forget about TechTV almost entirely, they (fortunately) said that TechTV did exist at one point, through old reruns of X-Play. It eventually got to the point that DirectTV dropped G4, sending the network into obscurity for DirectTV viewers. **And if that wasn't enough, Code Monkeys (G4's only non-anime animated show, not counting Happy Tree Friends' TV adaptation or its Canadian counterpart's "Adult Digital Distraction") fell into semi-obscurity after two seasons. **The Marvel Anime, as individual series, can be found on the cheap (usually no more than $5 per series; four-in-ones are another story) thanks to a combination of most G4 shows being under this trope and frequent re-releases. **In 2012, G4 ended X-Play and Attack of the Show!, not because of this trope, but because of their hosts leaving the network. **Just months before, Adam Stotsky became CEO of G4, and he decided to replace G4 with the Esquire Network. He partially succeeded... but the revamp didn't happen to G4. It happened to G4's sister network Style instead. **After what happened above, many cable and satellite providers began to drop the network one by one, until eventually only AT&T U-Verse (and a few small cable providers) had G4 in their cable lineup. That's how bad NBC wanted G4 to be completely forgotten. **To clarify how obscure G4 was since the TechTV buyout, Proving Ground only got 31,000 viewers when the first episode premiered. However, Proving Ground only had 9 episodes filmed not because of this trope, it was because one its co-hosts was killed in a car crash. **On New Year's Eve 2014, exactly one year after SoapNet was shut down, G4 played one last montage (referencing its launch) before being shut down completely. While G4 hasn't gone completely obscure since (its website remained up for three years after its shutdown, a feat not accomplished by any other network, whose sites get shuttered or redirected before they actually shutter), the shutdown made it semi-obscure at best; anyone searching "G4TV" on Google in 2017 would mostly get news about its shutdown (either its aborted re-launch or its final shutdown) in addition to a link for the G4 site. **Syfy's freemium gaming site started up a news section with the G4 branding, presumably only so that NBC would keep the trademarks. **It got even worse come July 2017, when it was announced that G4 Canada was shutting down. Yes, the Canadian counterpart to G4- though some people expected this, considering the semi-obscurity of the Canadian channel, as well as what happened to the American G4 and Rogers Media not renewing its deal with Greedy Productions (producers of EP Daily and Reviews on the Run). ***And when G4 Canada finally shut down? Unlike what happened to the US' website (which was still up at the time, as mentioned above), the Canadian website was redirected to City's own website. *KidsCo, mainly due to its shutdown after NBC pulled out, as they wanted to focus on Sprout (now Universal Kids). *As mentioned on Disney's own page, Comcast launched several counter-offers for the entirety of Fox's library (excluding series from Fox Kids, which Disney was forced to buy in a deal including Saban Entertainment and Fox Family 16 years before they announced their intent to acquire Fox's assets save the broadcast network and a few other assets). Had Comcast continued their bid until their offer was approved, it meant Comcast would have acquired the rights to several obscure series from Fox.